Anglican Community Project

We need community. The need is everywhere present and easy to see. Much of life in the Church is shallow and meaningless. We are not bearing each other's burdens. We are not discipling, we are not evangelizing, we do not live near each other, we do not care for the neighborhoods we live in. Let's make 2009 a year where we begin to reverse these trends and carve out an Anglican response to this sickness.

Here are some 'curricular' ideas for the intentional educational community I just described --what I have, provisionally, called 'Keble House.' I think there should be certain core aspects to life in such an intentional community. Common worship and work should always be intrinsic parts of the daily life in the House. On the other hand, residents should also be challenged to set forth a personal 'formation plan' for each year or, perhaps, even for a longer period of residency (say, an entire 4 year plan). Build into the life of the House a sense that personal formation--spiritual, intellectual, emotional--is a project each of us can intentionally and communally undertake. Build into it regular moments of self-reflection and -evaluation. And as a result, residents would be trained in a very meaningful set of disciplines for life, that would help transform them and their world. For instance, formation plans should include goals for spiritual disciplines (e.g.,...

Anglicans have always had a great commitment to learning. We have a rich tradition of clergy-scholars, and more importantly, of educational institutions committed to forming hearts and minds for Christ. The history of Christianity in the British Isles inspires admiration for bishops, priests and laity who have sought to form young lives for Christian service through educational institutions. I fear, though, that Anglicanism's educational identity has not weathered well the storms of the modern world and I suspect that the failure of education in the Anglican way has helped lead us to the crisis we are in. We see revisionism ripe in our seminaries. We see primary, secondary and higher educational institutions moving away from a Christian identity all together. And at the parish level, it is far too common to find uneducated laity, who cannot effectively disciple others in the basics of Scripture and doctrine. So we need to renew and deepen our commitment to the authority of ...

...but just barely! I hope this blog can lift off again soon.

Writing in Touchstone magazine, Eric Miller says: And what of the old "Christian" West? Maybe, in God's providence, it was time for it to recede. Like a college, a civilization that fails to incarnate many of the chief ideals it has championed deserves, if not ridicule, at least a stern rebuke and a sober exit. Maybe instead of fighting so hard to preserve a dying civilization, people of Christian faith should allow the most noble ideals and practices of our Western heritage to call into existence a new people, one that more faithfully adheres to that timeless vision of the good life the West at its best conserved, a people that will begin this time with a markedly improved awareness of the worth of each particular creature of God, and, indeed, of the inestimable worth of the entire creation. This is another call to thick community, to a new way of living rooted lives, to striking out against our current atomized way of life.

Here is one high-end approach to creating an intentional community in our day: Ave Maria and here's a video of the area: video

I don’t need to outline the pain that the price of gas is inflicting on us all. It is an albatross around the collective neck of our country. When you live in the exurbs like I do, you drive a lot. I drive an hour to work and an hour-twenty to church at 85 mph. I would never choose to live like this, but it is something of a lack of foresight on my part, and something of a lack of financial possibilities. I have a feeling that many people are absolutely sick of living in this manner. Now, there is also a large sector of the population that thinks the American dream is living on as many acres as possible, as far away from people as possible, in the biggest home that is possible. I think there is a change in the air, indeed upon us, but it will take decades to work itself out. One large factor in my thinking is the definition of the good life, as posited by Aristotle, Aquinas and the Christian tradition. Philip Bess sums up the tradition on the good life: ...the good life for individual ...